The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-03-03
BELLEVUE, La, THURSDAY, MARCH B. 1887.

Hiosl cordial encouragement. She has
done great deal to encourage the lace
makers OF Venice. visiting the schools
where lace making is taught, revived
the making of old styles of lace, which
mad become almost lost art. She has
done much to increase the wages of the
best workers and securing for them the
same respect as is shown to artists in
other departments of the fine arts. In
short, her life is devoted to good works.
Lately was celebrated the thirty-sixth
anniversary of the Queens birth which
she favored the Florentines by spending
with them and of which they made the
most in very tasteful and yet not ex-
pensive way. 1t was the particular re-
quest of the King, it is said, that there
might be no great and expensive de-
monstrations in the city for their recep-
ton. Indeed these were the conditions
upon which alone he would consent to
make this visit of couple of weeks.
He said the city could not afford to
spend money in this way. The people
had greater need for it in other ways.
If they would let their King and the
royal family come as any other guests,
they would gladly come. When the
facade of their old cathedral should be
finished and unveiled, that would be a
grand day for Florence. Then he would
come to Florence as the King of Italy,
if they desired it.
Their coming made a pleasant holiday
for the old city. They drove out every
day in various parts of the city and
visited schools, hospitals, studios and
public institutions ofvarious kinds. At
sunrise there was salute of twenty
one guns and during the day multi
tude OF men were busy in arranging for
the illumination and procession of the
evening. Ichanced to be two or three
times on the piazza of the Duosno, where
men were preparing for the illumina-
tion of the grand dome, of which it is
related that Michael Angelo said when
called to build the dome of St. Peter lin
Rome: "Beteer than that 1 can not
build; like it will not.n 1t seemed "a
trade as dreadful as that of gathering
samphire in '.King Lear to fix the
lights in their places on the steep slope
of the dome, and it must have been
more dreadful in the evening to
light them, one would Judge. 1t was
done by men held by a rope fastened
round their body, and then fastened
round the lantern of the dome. At the
immense height at which they were
thus suspended they seemed no larger
than children. But the illumination of
the cathedral, the bapt;>try, the great
churches of the city, and above all the
Palazzo Vechio, the old municipal pal
ace that has been the witness of so
many grand--so many sad sights during
the ages that are past.
! And the procession through the streets
was something finer than any thing of
the kind | ever saw before. All the
skill of the Florentines of the days when
the greatest artists that then, or ever,
lived were the arrangers of such fetes
and professions, seemed to have come
back and re-endowed the men of this
generation, for surely nothing of the
kind could have been more tasteful
more brilliant and enchanting as the
pictures of fairyland--than the scenes
arranged to honor the Queens ami
versary. Florence Cor. Detroit Tribune.